School Uses Laptops to Enable Learning

On a normal day at the Academy of Business, Law and Education charter school in Stockton, students will enter their classrooms and perform a 10-minute warm up assignment as part of a 90-minute course block.

If that sounds like "any high school USA," it is. Except for one thing: ABLE Charter doesn't use textbooks. It's an all-digital high school that uses an online curriculum and Web-based research tools in all of its courses.

"Everybody has a laptop. The text is an online experience, and the kids take them home," the school's Assistant Principal Clem Lee said.

The concept is something that one ABLE teacher, George Neely, wants to expand. Neely also is a Lodi Unified trustee, and he said he plans to make a big push in the coming year to bring the type of school at which he teaches into the district he oversees, even after he's seen resistance for his idea in the past.